The following article was written only hours after
attending a performance of BALLET MECANIQUE in Lowell, Mass., November
of 1999. The review — admittedly biased in favour of the pneumatic
Player-Piano (Pianola), since the music was originally
composed for an instrument in this mediumplus a silent
motion picture — was written from the viewpoint of the mechanical piano.

This is where the work began, as a "machine
composition" performed by a musical mechanism. With the aspect
of the cinéma, the "ballet" as it were, was totally machine-oriented,
from the pneumatics striking piano keys to the surreal images envisioned
for the motion picture which was to accompany the Pianola in many Paris
Salon settings during the 1924-1926 period.

The writer has had decades of experiece with both
the original (and highly flawed) 1925 French rolls made by the Pleyel Co.
plus has spent untold hours reconstructing "the composer's intent" in creating
a 1991 version of the music roll performance. This copyrighted edition
was commissioned by Swedish TV-Radio and performed in Stockholm, for a
broadcast involving 2 Aeolian players and a version of the motion picture
bearing the same name. Shortly after that, armed with several Antheil scores
— including the Pleyel manuscript, supplied by the composer's Estate —
an entirely new and exciting version of BALLET MECANIQUE was released.
For the first time a single Pianola could execute the effervescent staccato
chords that the composition demanded, and the muddy, overlapping perforations
of the original arrangement were truly a thing of the past.

The new BALLET MECANIQUE can be ordered only from ARTCRAFT Music
Rolls. (A complete description of the 3-Roll Set can be found on this Web
page — Ballet Mécanique - 88-Note
Roll Set . This text is also linked to a fascinating Internet page
group by Chris Beaumont, one of the composer's two sons.)

The concert review that follows first appeared in
The Mechanical Music Digest, an Internet publication for Player-Pianos
and related instruments. We are taking the liberty of re-introducing the
concert critique in its original form, as submitted since the Yamaha
of America people, maker of the solenoid-operated MIDI player called the
Disklavier have just published another totally "revisionist" article on
the subject of BALLET MECANIQUE in their Accent Magazine,
Vol. 36, 2000 - pages 3 and 4.

Once again the pneumatic Player-Piano, which could
handle this music so effectively is dismissed, with references to "making
do with a single pianola" ... and once more we read that George Antheil
composed BALLET MECANIQUE for "sixteen synchronized player-pianos"
... a statement which has not been supported by any old photographs, writings
by the composer (and his contemporaries) or any other source apart from
the realm of contemporary 'hearsay'.

The Diskalvier players at the Lowell, Mass. concert
were barely audible, wimping along with broken chords and partial piano
scales. If one knows ANYTHING about serial computers running solenoids,
it's that a piece composed for 31-Note staccato chords in unsion
is beyond the limit of these instruments ... better suited
as background music devices in restaurants and shopping malls. The live
percussionists and electronic keyboards "carried the weight" in this overhyped
and essentially lackluster concert which mainly sold itself on the strength
of 16 "synchronized Diskalviers" performing this work (quote) "for the
first time ever!"

The MIDI instruments were not sycnrhonized, when
one could hear them ... and the pneumatic Player-Piano is still the most
efficient and sparkling manner in which to perform this work: as a solo
instrument — or in concert with a variety of live pianists and added percussion
devices.

A "road show" of this new Disklavier version will
be taking place at Carnegie Hall in April 2000 and later in San Francisco
CA in June of this year.

It is hoped that this article, plus a study of the
superb Maurice Peress CD recording of BALLET MECANIQUE (Musical
Heritage Society: #513891L) along with its well-researched jacket notes,
will clear the air of the "smoke and mirrors" surrounding this on-going
Disklavier campaign about "what the Pianola can't do".

The pneumatic player, running the new ARTCRAFT-Antheil
Set of rolls, is nothing short of exciting. Watching 16 pathetic solenoid
players botching the staccato, rolling the chords and playing in total
about as loud as one leaky Pianola is NOT what this Art Deco music was
all about.

Moreover, the composition was "experimental". There
was no one way to perform it, instrumentally or in its intended
audio-visual fashion with the original motion picture.

Justification for our article is confirmed when one
reads these lines in Accent Magazine:

The original version was never realized
... until now.The technology of the Yamaha Disklavier has
finally made it possibleto synchronize all the instruments neededto play the musical masterpiece in its original
entirety.plus
This is the first ever performance
of George Antheil'sBallet Mécaniquein its original instrumentation.

The Disklavier people cannot support the word
"original" with respect to this electronic player + electronic keyboard
version. It's just another in a long string of revivals, and from the
Player-Piano point of view, not very memorable ... at least in the 16-piano
Disklavier version we experienced in Lowell, Mass.

Take THE BALLET MECANIQUEGuided Tour:
13 pages of detailed illustrations!We invite you to take a few minutes to view sharp illustrations of
ARTCRAFT and vintage Pleyel Music Rolls,
complete with explanations about them. Even without a Player-Piano
you can see many things, and we can
guarantee that you've never seen Pianola rolls which look anything
like this. Interested? Click here to start your
Tour!

Before commenting on last night's performance, let
me mention how this particular composer and his experimental work have
been a part of my life - in varying degrees - for almost a Half Century.

Admittedly, this review of the November 18, 1999
concert at Durgin Hall at the Universal of Massachusetts Lowell, will be
a bit biased - and for several reasons. First, I have floated in and out
of subjects involving composer Antheil since the early 1950s ... back in
the days before Charles Amirkhanian lived on my paper route and I was associating
with Dale and Sally Lawrence who were player roll enthusiasts; the couple
eventually crossed paths with him in the early 1970s - via KPFA, the Berkeley
independent radio station. This meeting led to two things: 1) a presentation
of BALLET MECANIQUE in the San Francisco area using the truncated movie
and pneumatic Player-Pianos; 2) Mr. Amirkhanian starting 'The Antheil Press'
which licensed the old original '25 Pleyel music rolls for concert purposes,
as well as other activities concerning the preservation and publishing
of the author's scores. It was during his time that the Lawrences made
open reel tapes for Charles Amirkhanian to use for his copyrights (via
their Ampico player piano) - copies of which they, being lifelong friends,
sent to me in Maine - where I moved in the 1960s.

Nothing much came of the BALLET MECANIQUE subject
until collector and film enthusiast Roger Baffer invited me to his home
in Woolwich, in the very late 1960s ... where he had planned on using a
solenoid player (the 'vorsetzer' version of the Pianocorder) with a print
of the 8mm movie film he had. That project was never completed, but he
had "sound striped" the motion picture and 'fitted' portions of the '53
LP recording, made under the auspices of the composer - a short 12 minute
version with the tapes of jet plane engines.

At the time I was very disappointed, since movie
- while synchronized quite well on the 8mm+magnetic film combination -
was a 'tricksy party' film and had little to do with the heavy machinery
aspects associated with the art of Léger and the music of Antheil,
a bit later on. However, the "time space" concept - developed by Antheil
- of having repeating patterns which can be cut or stretched to 'fit' a
particular motion picture sequence were obvious ... and with the right
kind of movie the audio would complement the visual.

The Lawrences' involvement in a Pianola+film presentation
was mentioned above, so we'll skip up to the late 1980s, when recuts of
the ratty and flawed French '25 roll Sets began to be produced for some
foreign stage performances. I happened to know the people who did this
work - having a lunch in Sedalia, Mo. at a Ragtime Festival at the time
- and asked about the rolls. My impression was the the roll duplicator
screwed up his face when he heard the title.

In the late 1980s, my French representative - Douglas
Heffer - acquired Rolls I and II, sending Xeroxed copy sheets of them (which
I can "read" on my equipment) - and proposed a revival of BALLET MECANIQUE,
involving director Anders Wahlgren and Swedish TV-Radio. Originally, they
wanted me to recut the original rolls "as is" while I had friends with
access to the '53 orchestral score ... and the plan was to use the Lawrences'
copyright tapes made for the Antheil Estate, a metronome and the last revision
to 'reconstruct' Roll III, which I could have done -- but at very great
expense.

Eventually, an original roll (with George Antheil's
pencilled-in annotations was sent to me by the Estate) ... and by that
time I had discovered missing notes, wrong striking effects and a host
of other factors which made the Pleyel version rather unsatisfactory on
any pneumatic player instrument. The main problem was that this roll was
created - as was common in the industry - by "laying out the notation"
on graph paper, what I choose to call "sheet music transfer". Most old
rolls are of this vein, and they have contributed to the stereotype of
players being droning, boring instruments ... because the pianoforte is
being operated as if an organist were pressing the keys. (My method of
cutting - Interpretive Arranging - developed in the 1950s - graduates the
perforation lengths down to a 128th of a note [that's five flags on each
symbol] ... and this, in turn, lets me control the crispness of staccato
playing, something which is totally absent on the typical formula rolls
of the past, including the French set of Antheil's music.)

The Stockholm performance took place on March 2,
1991, using a tinted '26 Dutch print of the movie BALLET MECANIQUE plus
my reconstructed roll arrangement, being played with 2 matching Aeolian
upright players. [Note: the rolls were cut to 'fit' the truncated movie
of today, in order to achieve synchronization.] Dr. Juergen Hocker attended
this performance and wrote me shortly thereafter that "your arrangement
was electric and spine-tingling".

During my reconstruction of the composer's original
intent, admittedly slanted due to my lifelong obsession with the silent
cinema, Fotoplayers (made to accompany the movies) and Pianolas, it soon
became clear to me that if the '25 arrangement were REDONE FROM SCRATCH
(not "reworked" as stated in last night's program!), I could - by graduating
the key depression times - create sound images for the parts of the 4 piano
solos upon which this Pianola+film experimental work was based: "Sonata
Sauvage," "Mechanisms," "Aeroplane Sonata" and "Death of the Machines".
Thus, I perforated while thinking of stamping presses, bottling equipment,
old-fashioned airplanes, newsreels of architectural destruction during
World War I and also of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS - which also touched, visually,
upon some of these themes. The result is a set of rolls which can stand
alone ... without added on percussion effects and even the 'party' movie
which never really deserved the score, though - originally - could have
been performed in tandem with the Pleyel rolls.

Since then, various friends and roll customers have
attended or sent me information regarding additional BALLET MECANIQUE performances,
such as Richard Dearborn in the Trenton, NJ area approximately a year ago,
while Dr. Hocker went on to control 2 Ampico pneumatic players - via MIDI,
I understand - for his European performances. (I believe he has a Boesendorfer
Ampico and a J. C. Fischer Ampico grand, though on the Antheil lecture
last night it was stated as "2 Boesendorfers" ... perhaps he's upgraded
since our last communication!)

Now, having stated my connections with this unusual
music - presented in a variety of forms over the years - I'll return to
this critique, commenced a few paragraphs ago ... while the memory of last
night's concert is still fresh in my mind.

*******************************

Musician Michael Potash (who was involved with my
end of the Swedish TV-Radio project of 1991) and I went together to Durgin
Hall. Like me he knows "just about every note" of this work in its Pianola
form ... and possesses a Franklin Marque Ampico, a pedal 'reproducing'
player upright.

We began the afternoon in Framingham, Mass. by having
a live performance of BALLET MECANIQUE: one of the Pleyel rolls which belonged
to the composer was run, in part, as 'Brand X' ... and then the ARTCRAFT
Roll Set of mine was performed from beginning to end. This gave us an opportunity
to absorb the accents marked on my rolls as well as the composer's player
roll score), remember some key "time space" sections [which matched the
original-length movie] and get into the spirit of a Jazz Age 'moderne'
Art Deco composition ... written in the 1920s but realized in perforated
form during the months of 1990-1991, when I was commissioned to make the
rolls for director Wahlgren.

The first part of the program showcased Jeffrey Fischer,
conductor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell Percussion Ensemble,
with piano soloists Juanita Tsu and John McDonald. His talented and energetic,
dedicated group opened with a percussion piece which (since I'm obviously
no expert on modern compositions beyond my "lifetime" with George Antheil!)
something that reminded me of Balinese music, with a tinge of Jamaican
rhythms here and there. The first one was quite similar in effect to some
Parlophone 78s our neighbors had, recorded in the South Seas in the late
1920s. Summed up, the percussion numbers were interesting and the interplay
was fascinating to watch as well as hear. (I somewhat expected this, since
the National Public Radio interviewer - covering the pre-concert publicity,
a day or so earlier - said that the xylophonists, keyboard pianists and
percussionists were more intriguing than the self-playing pianos. Well,
nothing beats a human in control ... be it a live musician -- or a Pianolist
interpreting rolls for pianos and/or organs).

Again, I'm no expert on the 3 pieces that Richard
Grayson wrote ... a premiere on the Diskalvier instruments. However, it
seemed to me on the first hearing that these were a "shade more creative"
than the typical MIDI arrangements which rely too much on notation standards,
or what I call 'electronic graph paper' (referring to the perforating methods
described above). Later, during Intermission, I ran into musician and computer
expert Mark Lutton, who was engaged in telling me that the Grayson transcriptions
made more use of MIDI than the rest of the program, which pretty much followed
the music scores. (Humans read scores but don't play them to the letter,
which is what makes for individualistic interpretations in the performing
world. Notation is a "code" which the artist interprets. Old Pianola rolls
usually just played back the sheet music, which dominated factory arranging
in the heyday of the instrument.) I never learned any more about the differences
between the Grayson performances and the others, since Mark got interrupted
and others came to view my player rolls ... one of which belonged to George
Antheil, as stated above.

The finale from the Mendelssohn 'Italian' symphony
represented a lot of work, obviously, since it involved so many electronic
player instruments. However, Mark and other musicians I knew, in the audience
that night, told me that this was locked too much into notation to suit
their fancy. I felt that my Mendelssohn should be frothy, with defined
accents ... and that the trills shouldn't come on like machine guns when
they were required. (ARTCRAFT Rolls don't have the old player roll "punch+skip+punch"
trill pattern; the staccato is graduated and in many cases a slight stepping
change in the figuration adds a human element to this ornament. I allow
for the finger - as imagined! - to reach the key, pause for a split moment
in time, gain momentum and then change in a variety of ways as the subconscious
mind tells the artist to head for another key at the end. Magnetic tapes
have been used for audio analysis since I first began working with rolls
in '52 as a teenager.) Thus, any "Galtin gun trill" is a performance 'no-no'
in my book.

Instead of the dynamic changes (solo notes, wild
intensity swings and the like), this complicated arrangement used the pipe
organ technique of adding or subtracting pipes, but in this case the plus-minus
aspect happened to involve the 16 solenoid players.

While pianos doubled, tossed the music right and
left, and so forth, the astute listener in the audience heard little beyond
large chords - in a rather muted M.F. range - and those irritating "barrel
organ" trills mentioned above.

Why?

The answer lies in the fact that the more pianos
one adds, the more the strings cancel the sound, acoustics being what they
are. Igor Stravinsky didn't understand this (and I have a book which details
his letters with the Pleyel roll factory during the arranging of rolls
in his name). What Igor did, Antheil copied. (Later, Oscar Levant writes
A SMATTERING OF IGNORANCE - his best-selling book. Immediately, Antheil
follows with THE BAD BOY OF MUSIC, another example of his following a trend.
My copy of the Antheil book even opens with a quote from the Levant book,
showing the connection there. My copy of the Pleyel score has instructions
which say "just like Stravinsky" in one place!)

The antique musical box people knew, in the early
19th Century, what duplicates of notes could do for the music. Sublime
Harmonie cylinder boxes (2 or more combs) up through the Symphonion 'Eroica'
3-disc musical box (6 independent scales, playing together!) all faced
this duplicate pitch problem. The solution on musical boxes was to alter
the tuning - ever so slightly - so that, say 6 "Middle C" notes and 5 "C#"
notes in a trill wouldn't be cancelling each other out. Even today, in
our music box shop in Lexington, Mass. [The
Merry Music Box], it's typical for a 36-Note Swiss movement to be LOUDER
than a 50-note one, and that in turn, is LOUDER than a 72-note or 144-note
(dual comb) scale.

Clearly, more is NOT louder in the field of musical
boxes and pianofortes!

Mark Lutton, mentioned above, had a key seat in Durgin
Hall. Being a MIDI expert - also knowing its many limitations - he thought
there might be a 500-millisecond 'delay' with that many pianos running
on a program. There was a term he used called a "MIDI smear" ... and upon
talking with him during Intermission, he detailed the time span between
the instruments on each side of the auditorium. Clearly, the Disklaviers
- even from where we sat - were not truly synchronized, as claimed in the
concert publicity.

By the time Intermission began, we welcomed the return
of the live musicians, since those Disklavier pianos - played extensively
by this time - had a "Home Show organist" sound - something like YOU CAN'T
BE TRUE DEAR, in what I used to call the 'Ken Griffin' style. I longed
for a sfozando 'crash' accents or a solo note in the passages, rising above
the texture ... as good music roll performances easily provide.

We enjoyed the lecture which preceded the premiere
of the 16 Disklavier BALLET MECANIQUE performance. It was fairly sketchy
on the details of the sundry Antheil versions - and history thereof - but
was pretty heavy with the anecdotes about the composer's life ... most
being recollections published in '45 or recorded by KPCC-FM in Santa Monica,
shortly before his death. "After-the-fact Antheil" is always suspect, in
my opinion.

I, for one, would have liked to know more about this
mysterious "Pleyel patent" that was supposed to synchronize Pianolas, which
Mr. Lehrman mentioned in his entertaining dialogue - interspersed with
slides and audio clips related to the composer.

While the audience was told that 16 pneumatic mechanical
pianos couldn't be synchronized until "now" - with the emergence of the
Disklavier, this is not true. (He mentioned several other solenoid player
brands, but eliminated the earlier Pianocorder and the Boesendorfer SE
- the latter a costly instrument which is the best of the lot, as the giant
93-key 'Imperial' model at M.I.T. can be, when adjusted correctly.)

It's too bad that the people involved didn't get
in touch with me when this business - on much of the pre-concert publicity
- stated that "Pianolas can't be synchronized" as an historical fact.

Aeolian in the late 1890s had some Pianola concerts
(then a 58-Note console player attached to a pianoforte keyboard) which
were connected by electrical lines to their Orchestrelle player reed organs
and their Aeolian Pipe Organs. The Music Box society reprinted - about
25 years ago - an illustrated review of such a concert which took place
in their Philadelphia dealership of the time. The photo shows the Pianola
with the 2 organs - controlled from it - on either side of the pneumatic
player; all 3 shared the same 58-Note scale at that time, incidentally.
The 88-Note player roll wasn't standardized until 1909.

In the early 1900's the Tel-Electric Co. of Pittsfield,
Mass. made instruments using brass (later heavy cardboard) music rolls,
which - in turn - activated solenoid strikers, just like the computer players
of today. Unlike the Disklaviers and their kind, these could play octaves
and chords - including LARGE chords - in unison, and they weren't limited
by approximately 15 piano keys, before they conked out. (BALLET MECANIQUE
was written for Pianola with up to 31-notes playing in unison - clearly
out of the range of a single Disklavier, but easy for any good pneumatic
player to handle.)

Later, in the 'Teens, the Flexotone-Electrelle (by
the American Piano Co., later makers of the Ampico) published articles
in which upright pianos were synchronized at strategic places around a
dance hall or ballroom (like Roseland in New York City, perhaps?) ... allowing
all the pianos to play together and therefore to be able to provide for
synchronized dance music at any place in the room. The Flexotone used standard
Pianola rolls, by the way, and a small vacuum to activate the microswitches
which sent the musical information to the electro-magnetic strikers.

In the old days, the solenoid player never really
caught on. Why? Boring music was the norm. Everything played pretty much
at one dynamic, for the most part, and so they were never really much of
any competition to the pneumatic player action industry ... save being
used on private yachts (where humidity could be a factor) or in sychronized
fashion for dancing purposes, as described above.

This brings us back to the performance of BALLET
MECANIQUE last night. The percussionists were good ... but they were in
front of the 16 little console Yamaha pianos, all with their front panels
removed and "trying to do their best". In the old photos of the live orchestral
performances, one usually sees pianos on stage front - with the 'extras'
back behind. Perhaps when transmitted as a broadcast recording, the balance
- which was totally wrong from the audience listening point of view - the
pianos (each miked individually) can be "turned up louder" ... and therefore
be able to compete with the accompaniment of the drums, xylophones and
other devices which clearly dominated the sound of the performance.

Also, as expected, the Disklavier limitations meant
that only partial keyboards were being used - often on doubled pianos -
much of the time. What had been the full sweep of a staccato chord on perforated
rolls was now only part of the keyboard, and then the staccato wasn't that
pronounced. When you could hear the pianos, together or singly, everything
was pretty much at monotone level, and not very loud at that. (One musical
friend wondered aloud to me if "overloading" the circuits might have made
someone decide to cut the voltage, and this led to cocktail lounge playing
on the part of the solenoid actions. That's not my department, of course!)

Both Michael and I noted repeatedly, on the piano
at stage right, that the "cluster chords" for BALLET MECANIQUE - in the
bass - were "rolled" like a theatre organist and not struck in unison as
a pianist or Pianola would have done. (I have hand edited-out such "rolling"
effects on my rolls, when they occur, being the result of a flaw in a perforating
run!) Those keys should 'whap' the bottom bass keys together, not as a
series of notes!

I have never had the privilege of hearing Dr. Hocker's
2 Ampico pneumatic players - synchronized by MIDI - but I would suspect
that these would duplicate the "punch" of the standard Pianola playing
the music rolls: old or new, when compared to the bank of 'weak sister'
Disklaviers tweedling their keys.

Using electromagnets to trigger pneumatics is nothing
new, as pianos attached to Wurlitzer theatre organs prove ... and above
I mentioned Aeolian operating reed and pipe organs from a Pianola, using
similar technology. The '30 Aeolian Concertola and other remote control
players for organs and expression players were designed along similar lines.
Perhaps one of the Hocker 2 Ampico performances will be produced on audio,
since I doubt if I can get to Europe at this time. (Zipping from Maine
to Mass. for this concert took enough time and energy for me!) I would
expect that the Hocker versions would have more panache for the Pianola
part of the score ... and ... things would be striking in unison as well
as chords up to 31-notes (or more) could be handled by these players. Dynamics
would be the major upgrade when returning to pneumatic striking, I'm certain.

The number of pianos - since they don't add "volume"
as claimed by Stravinsky and Antheil in the 1920s - doesn't matter here.
The Peress recording has mostly virtuoso keyboard pianists for its sense
of life, and I heartily recommend it for those who wish to experience his
well-researched recreation of the original orchestral version. One Pianola
... two, as in Dr. Hocker's case ... or synchronized keyboard pianists
-- these all can provide the necessary loud sound and also the crisp staccato
accents for performance contrast. (Don't expect to hear the Pianola, which
gets drowned out, on the Peress recording. I'm not certain that any automatic
piano can really compete with keyboard artists and live percussionists,
due to the design nature of players of ANY type - and this has to do with
the strikers resting on the keys, as it were.)

When BALLET MECANIQUE had ended at Durgin Hall, Michael
Potash said, "I could sum up this performance: 'drab'".

A noted roll collector was there as well, and he
told Michael, "One standard player-piano could have been on that stage,
and it would have been louder and better than those sixteen instruments."
(I was thinking the same thing during the entire Antheil performance, arriving
at concerts with my own piano/trailer setup: see the ARTCRAFT Website for
the Reprotone player picture and text!)

There will be, no doubt, many performances of George
Antheil's experimental work in the future ... and all will be different,
as that's what the word "experimental" means -- a work-in-progress which
was never completely finished.

I'm glad that I attended this packed-house concert.
It broke no new ground for me, especially since some of the problems of
"synchronizing Pianolas" were solved almost 100 years ago ... and that
French 'patent' (perhaps somebody's revisionist fantasy) never surfaced
in reality.

You'll note that I don't comment on the Nancarrow
portions of the concert. Those who've read my Website - or who know me
- soon realize that I'm no fan of his type of music. Antheil has musical
form, drama, humor and variations in his BALLET MECANIQUE - at least on
rolls - and that's what I can latch on to. I did perform Nancarrow for
the 15th Season of the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble - which also premiered
a Swedish work written for the Pianola medium
(LINNMANIA-MARSEILLASE), and that got the majority of the applause.
My Nancarrow rolls were borrowed from the Lawrences - see the earlier paragraphs
above! - prior to Dr. Hocker taking over the handling of his music and
player rolls. [Small world, isn't it?] I do remember reading the Ampico
dynamics on the roll margins and playing with more "pizzazz" - adding accents
- than the Disklaviers did, which were sloshing through everything at pretty
much one dynamic. The "Nancarrow concert" which involved me, Michael Potash,
Dave Levin and a Brewster pedal player upright belonging to Peter Neilson
was a complete success ... especially my Swedish number if the clapping
counts for anything! Meanwhile, during the 2-hour reception, I was asked
to play the Nancarrow and Malapiero rolls again for an interested party.
He turned out to be Richard Dyer, music critic of The Boston Globe, who
said in his review the next day, "That Nancarrow music can be played in
no other way," so I guess I did justice to the music! [This Pianola recital/reception
took place at the First & Second Church in Boston, on February 18,
1990.]

There is, of course, room for extreme variety here
... Antheil's composition lending itself to everything from Pianola movie
accompaniment to a full-blown orchestral presentation. As Mr. Lehrman said,
people in future many never experience 16 pianos playing this work again.
(That's fine with me, if they are solenoid players!) It was o.k., but not
exciting when one is steeped in stamping and editing the '91 player rolls
every few weeks ... three hours armed with a log book and the '25 score
to process every 2 Sets by ARTCRAFT.)

One last thing here, the original movie - used in
the Salon days of BALLET MECANIQUE - was 30 minutes long. Censorship and
artistic changes kept the movie in flux, and this is reflected on the score,
where the composer keeps changing numbers for the "time space" sequences.

The audience was told that Antheil had written a
30-minute composition for a movie that was "too short". (Insert laughter
here.)

Not true! Originally, the Synchro-Ciné film
was 3 reels long, approximately a 1/2 hour in length. The 250 foot long
perforated arrangement - spread over 3 rolls, though written for 2 - using
a Fotoplayer - matches the Salon movie of the day. This is why the "time
space" numbering continues to the end of the score, with various elements
added or scratched-out. Most "scene numbers" are stamped on the '91 edition
of the rolls, to assist the Pianolist with each 'block' of the music.

As a final note, I should mention that on the 18th
- last night - the 2nd of 3 Pianola musicales were taking place in Switzerland
at 'Piano 99' ... the piano festival in Lucerne. Talented artists like
Radu Lupu and Andras Schiff will be playing Chopin and Beethoven, but ...
a BRAND-NEW Duo-Art console player built by Douglas Heffer (mentioned above
regarding BALLET MECANIQUE for Swedish TV-Radio!) will be performing only
my ARTCRAFT expression rolls: all hot Ragtime and jazz titles. Guess what
the finale will be for November 18th in Europe? Mark Lutton's fantastic
arrangement (or rather, my impression of his keyboard playing, perforated)
of LION TAMER RAG! Mark was attending the Antheil concert while "his music"
was wrapping up one of the Swiss recitals at the same time.

Isn't the mechanical music field "a small world after
all"? - quoting Disney!

As a last thought, since Antheil was being linked
to modern solenoid players, when his milieu was movies (a mechanical photographic
medium) and Pianolas, really, I've often thought it strange that he seems
to have ignored the high-tech electronic (and electric) instruments of
his day ... or at least, never seems to have written for or mentioned them.
One would expect that George Antheil would have gravitated to the Theremin
(in Europe, first - then here), the Neo-Bechstein piano, the Storytone,
the Hammond Organ, the Novachord, the Solovox and other such instruments.
Maybe, when it's stated that "Antheil would be pleased, if he were here"
he might have been even MORE PLEASED when hearing a single pneumatic Pianola
being finally able to realize his pulsating rhythms and jazzy-but-dissonant
musical passages.

There's room for yet another revival, and I'm certainly
it will be coming along soon. Meanwhile, I wish that somebody in the film
restoration field would use the "time space" on rolls to fashion a new
motion picture - 30 minutes long - which matches the spirit of Antheil's
music. It shouldn't be hard to get clips from old newsreels and industrial
films, splicing together scenes of aeroplanes and steam shovels. Like my
version, it would be a speculative reconstruction ... but anything's fair
game when the music is experimental!

Gabe Della Fave, who lives in New Jersey, took the time, effort and
expense
to experience the 2nd part of the Disklavier 'road show' ... this time
at Carnegie Hall on April 2, 2000. To his amazement there were no pianos,
but instead Clavinova-like electronic keyboards, now called "Disklaviers"!
These 'new model' Disklaviers are not genuine pianos, but electronic speaker
cabinets with keyboards attached. Thus, the audience in New York City heard
a set of loudspeakers on the stage, and not the 8 pianos — as most of the
audience expected for this performance!

Here's his review, which was also published in the Mechanical Music
Digest immediately after the concert:

"Ballet Mecanique" at Carnegie Hall by Gabe Della Fave

What a great pleasure it was to have been in New
York City's Carnegie Hall once again! The architecture is simple
and functional (though it is more than 100 years old) and the acoustics
of the Hall do in fact sound perfect.

There was a lecture before the concert, featuring
a question and answer session with new composer Jennifer Higdon, Paul Lehrman,
and others. People in the audience were speaking at normal volume and I
could fully understand all of them even though the Hall is fairly large,
with 2,800 seats. I was sitting in the orchestra and forth tier,
since the Hall was only 3/4 full. I did this in order to listen to
the sound in various parts of the Hall. During the concert, the tone
and clarity of the orchestral portions were amazing and wonderful.
I shudder when I think that we nearly lost the Hall in the 1950s to an
office building. Thanks to people such as Isaac Stern, the Hall remains
with us today, has been beautifully restored, and is much used in its original
form as Classical music concert venue.

This afternoon I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall.
This event consisted of the American Composers Orchestra performing four
works: Jennifer Higdon - Fanfare Ritmico (the New York Premiere of this
work); George Antheil - Ballet Mecanique (the work so famous for using
player pianos), Aaron Copland - Short Symphony, and Roger Sessions - Symphony
No. 3. This concert is a part of the "20th Century Snapshots" series
of concerts occurring over three seasons. The series seems to consist
of several pieces which have "mechanical" and classical or jazz themes,
and the period covered is from 1927 through 1931.

The Higdon work was strong and forceful, with
very aggressive percussion and strong but varying rhythms. The work
had a mechanical theme, in that it was about focusing on one clock ticking,
and then more clocks, and more, etc., until it was a symphony of our civilization.
The composer said that the recent Y2K "crisis" inspired this work.
Ms. Higdon received several bravoes but no standing ovation.

Copland's work had absolutely no percussion, except
the Steinway concert grand piano which was only lightly used. The
work tried to be aggressive and atonal but was only slightly so.
It was more a case of Aaron Copland's moving music (which I enjoy) given
an atonal bent. An orchestral piece without any percussion was unusual.
This work was very well received.

The Sessions piece started with music that sounded
like Debussy or Ravel with an atonal bent, but quickly descended into something
I couldn't understand and didn't care for. Not much applause after
this work, just the polite minimum, although the musicians were outstanding.

First on the Program, but last for this review, was
the first Carnegie Hall "original" performance of George Antheil's "Ballet
Mecanique" in 73 years. This was supposed to be according to his
"original intention" with 16 synchronized player pianos. There weren't
16 player pianos, rather there were only 8 of them, along with 2 spinet
pianos, 4 bass drums, 4 xylophones, and various other live percussion instruments.

The only non-acoustic sound effect appeared to be
the airplane propellers -- and the Clavinovas. All other effects
seemed to be played with acoustical instruments, including a tim-tam, siren,
and various bells and buzzers.

The 8 "player pianos" were shiny Yamaha Clavinova
grand-style digital MIDI pianos. I do not consider them to be real
pianos, as in acoustical pianos. Also, these were not pneumatic player
pianos (which I think have a far greater depth and range of musical ability).
Still, I tried to keep an open mind.

I have to say I was disappointed in the musical performance.
I feel that I did not hear 8 synchronized player pianos as was advertised.
I have three main reasons for this opinion. First, only partial piano
scales were used, thereby reducing the number of pianos being used if we
consider these as 88-note instruments. As I result, I expected something
louder than what I heard.

Second, the pianos seemed to be synchronized with
each other (and only to a degree), but the individual pianos rolled what
should have been staccato chords. This was a major flaw in the performance
and made the work sound very muddy and unclear -- even in Carnegie Hall.
As a result of the "softness" of the Clavinovas, the live musicians
had to play more softly than one would expect in order to not "drown out"
the Clavinovas. This was another major flaw. The general reaction
of the audience near me was "That was all?" or "I thought it would
be louder."

There were no dynamics among the Clavinovas.
Every section and passage had exactly the same volume of sound, and left
one wondering why dynamics were not used. The live musicians did
use dynamics to a degree, but in order to "agree" with the Clavinovas,
they "held back." In the middle of the interpretation of the work, I said
to myself, "These are not factory noises and this is not the aggressive,
driving Ballet Mecanique that I know."

I was sad to have to say this. I honestly didn't
care for the performance and would give it a bad rating overall.
I am not alone. There was only mild applause after the work, no bravoes,
and no standing ovation.

I have to also say that the musicians did the best
they could and they were excellent. During the orchestral pieces,
when there were no Clavinovas on stage, the musicians were truly outstanding
and flawlessly played exceedingly difficult works of fine music.

I can only compare this New York interpretation of
Ballet Mecanique to other versions I have heard; particularly the three
roll series by Artcraft Music Rolls as played on my own 1925 Super-Simplex
Lexington (built at the Hallet, Davis, & Co. factory). This player
piano has a completely rebuilt player action and a brand new piano action.
In effect, it is a "new" pneumatic player piano and is one of the more
musical designs and better performing versions of this instrument. I use
this instrument a great deal and therefore I believe I am fairly familiar
with the capabilities of the instrument and pneumatic player pianos in
general.

I have also played this roll series many times on
my Pianola, and I can safely say that my humble 88-note player piano does
a far better musical job of interpretation than those digital Clavinovas
in Carnegie Hall could ever even begin to hope to do.

In closing, the Ballet Mecanique performance was
dull and boring. It was only interesting in so far as watching how
the musicians attempted to "play around" the Clavinovas. The Higdon
and Copland works were interesting and enjoyable. The Sessions work
was rather dull and I could not understand its intention. The acoustics
of Carnegie Hall are indeed perfect and should not be missed.

2) A new book has just been published, entitled Everybody Was
So Young, written by Amanda Vaill. Here
one will find an interesting discussion of the
BALLET MECANIQUE
subject, both as
a motion picture and with a single player piano operated by composer
Antheil.
Interested parties are urged to read this text, as it stands in
total contrast to the current claimsby the solenoid player promoters of our time:
http://www.foxtail.com/Archives/Digests/199912/1999.12.26.01.html[or go to MMD Archives ... Date: December 26, 1999 and
access author Douglas Henderson]